Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Yemen had to arrest somebody, on the theory that it was better than being shelled by American gunships, so they did, based on some information left by the sender of the explosive photocopiers - can't you imagine the excitement of the Chicago rabbis as they open the unordered 200 pound photocopier, sent directly to them from Yemen, all without the slightest idea that something might be wrong? - as terrorists of course never lie in filling out forms that might allow them to be caught. Then Yemen released her, as her identity had been stolen and used by the sender (actually, it appears he just used her cell phone number, although the story is confusing as it states that the arrest was based on intelligence provided by the UAE and the US). Imagine that! So we don't know who sent the packages. Osama himself. 'Al Qaeda'. Or maybe, just maybe, the CIA or the Mossad. We don't know, and can't know. None of this has stopped American commentators from building a detailed story complete with the exact names of the people involved.

And the theory that they were supposed to be set off by cellphone while they were on the planes (despite the fact that putting a shipping address of a synagogue in Chicago guaranteed that they would not make it onto the planes)? Er, not so much. If you add to that the fact that the British had to examine their package twice before discovering what the Americans told them to discover, and the fact that the Obama surprise was just enough to keep the Democrats from losing control of the Senate, we have the most obvious case yet of a phony terrorist scare.

And yet all the 'experts' discuss this absurdity, providing elaborate detail, as if the story made perfect sense and all the facts were known.

Yemen had to arrest somebody, on the theory that it was better than being shelled by American gunships, so they did, based on some information left by the sender of the explosive photocopiers - can't you imagine the excitement of the Chicago rabbis as they open the unordered 200 pound photocopier, sent directly to them from Yemen, all without the slightest idea that something might be wrong? - as terrorists of course never lie in filling out forms that might allow them to be caught. Then Yemen released her, as her identity had been stolen and used by the sender (actually, it appears he just used her cell phone number, although the story is confusing as it states that the arrest was based on intelligence provided by the UAE and the US). Imagine that! So we don't know who sent the packages. Osama himself. 'Al Qaeda'. Or maybe, just maybe, the CIA or the Mossad. We don't know, and can't know. None of this has stopped American commentators from building a detailed story complete with the exact names of the people involved.

And the theory that they were supposed to be set off by cellphone while they were on the planes (despite the fact that putting a shipping address of a synagogue in Chicago guaranteed that they would not make it onto the planes)? Er, not so much. If you add to that the fact that the British had to examine their package twice before discovering what the Americans told them to discover, and the fact that the Obama surprise was just enough to keep the Democrats from losing control of the Senate, we have the most obvious case yet of a phony terrorist scare.

And yet all the 'experts' discuss this absurdity, providing elaborate detail, as if the story made perfect sense and all the facts were known.